Typology of statelessness

Abstract

To this day, legal statelessness is surprisingly undertheorised in political theory. While there has recently been a resurgence of scholarship on the topic, no one has yet offered a formal typology of statelessness. This dissertation attempts to offer a formal typology. In international law, stateless people fall under two general categories. They are either de facto or de jure stateless – that much is recognised. The first, second, and third chapter of this dissertation interrogate the status quo legal framework by assessing international agreements and the proposals that relevant experts have made for reform. Chapters four, five, six, and seven then examine how stateless people have been treated, at different times and in different places, by governments and the courts around the world.

Based on various examples I argue that there are significantly distinct types of statelessness. They are individual statelessness and collective statelessness, as well as three subtypes: voluntary, structural, and denigrative statelessness. These subtypes derive from three distinct sources of nationality deprivation: for voluntary statelessness individuals themselves, for structural statelessness international law, and for denigrative statelessness the country of origin. Having established this typology, I go on to contend that the rights owed to stateless people differ depending on the type of statelessness they suffer from.